Wednesday, May 3

http://video.freevideoblog.com/video/AAC7FA18-2DDC-4D3E-B1BB-9D6CBD83E27F.htmhttp://www.dailymotion.com/sensemilia/video/143459http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/04/stephen_colbert_2.htmlamong others. also available on dvd through cspan

May 1, 2006 | Make no mistake, Stephen Colbert is a dangerous man -- a bombthrower, an assassin, a terrorist with boring hair and rimless glasses. It'sa wonder the Secret Service let him so close to the president of the UnitedStates.

But there he was Saturday night, keynoting the year's most fawningcelebration of the self-importance of the D.C. press corps, the White HouseCorrespondents' Association dinner. Before he took the podium, the master ofceremonies ominously announced, "Tonight, no one is safe."

Colbert is not just another comedian with barbed punch lines and a racyvocabulary. He is a guerrilla fighter, a master of the old-world art ofirony. For Colbert, the punch line is just the addendum. The joke is in thesetup. The meat of his act is not in his barbs but his character -- the dryidiot, "Stephen Colbert," God-fearing pitchman, patriotic American,red-blooded pundit and champion of "truthiness." "I'm a simple man with asimple mind," the deadpan Colbert announced at the dinner. "I hold a simpleset of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believeit exists. My gut tells me I live there."

Then he turned to the president of the United States, who sat tight-lippedjust a few feet away. "I stand by this man. I stand by this man because hestands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things likeaircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And thatsends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she willalways rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world."

It was Colbert's crowning moment. His imitation of the quintessential GOPtalking head -- Bill O'Reilly meets Scott McClellan -- uncovered the innerworkings of the ever-cheapening discourse that passes for political debate.He reversed and flattened the meaning of the words he spoke. It's a tacticthat cultural critic Greil Marcus once called the "critical negation thatwould make it self-evident to everyone that the world is not as it seems."Colbert's jokes attacked not just Bush's policies, but the whole drama andlanguage of American politics, the phony demonstration of strength, unityand vision. "The greatest thing about this man is he's steady," Colbertcontinued, in a nod to George W. Bush. "You know where he stands. Hebelieves the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter whathappened Tuesday."

It's not just that Colbert's jokes were hitting their mark. We already knowthat there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that the generalshate Rumsfeld or that Fox News lists to the right. Those cracks are old andboring. What Colbert did was expose the whole official, patriotic,right-wing, press-bashing discourse as a sham, as more "truthiness" thantruth.

Obviously, Colbert is not the first ironic warrior to train his sights onthe powerful. What the insurgent culture jammers at Adbusters did forMadison Avenue, and the Barbie Liberation Organization did for children'stoys, and Seinfeld did for the sitcom, and the Onion did for the small-townnewspaper, Jon Stewart discovered he could do for television news. NowColbert, Stewart's spawn, has taken on the right-wing message machine.

In the late 1960s, the Situationists in France called such ironic mockery"détournement," a word that roughly translates to "abduction" or"embezzlement." It was considered a revolutionary act, helping to channelthe frustration of the Paris student riots of 1968. They co-opted andaltered famous paintings, newspapers, books and documentary films, seekingsubversive ideas in the found objects of popular culture. "Plagiarism isnecessary," wrote Guy Debord, the famed Situationist, referring to hisstrategy of mockery and semiotic inversion. "Progress demands it. Stayingclose to an author's phrasing, plagiarism exploits his expressions, erasesfalse ideas, replaces them with correct ideas."

But nearly half a century later, the ideas of the French, as evidenced byour "freedom fries," have not found a welcome reception in Washington. Thecity is still not ready for Colbert. The depth of his attack causedbewilderment on the face of the president and some of the press, who, likemyopic fish, are used to ignoring the water that sustains them. Laura Bushdid not shake his hand.

Political Washington is accustomed to more direct attacks that follow therules. We tend to like the bland buffoonery of Jay Leno or insider jokesthat drop lots of names and enforce everyone's clubby self-satisfaction.(Did you hear the one about John Boehner at the tanning salon or DukeCunningham playing poker at the Watergate?) Similarly, White Housespinmeisters are used to frontal assaults on their policies, which can berebutted with a similar set of talking points. But there is no easy answerfor the ironist. "Irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusivelynegative function," wrote David Foster Wallace, in his seminal 1993 essay "EUnibus Pluram." "It's critical and destructive, a ground clearing."

So it's no wonder that those journalists at the dinner seemed so uneasy intheir seats. They had put on their tuxes to rub shoulders with thepresident. They were looking forward to spotting Valerie Plame and "AmericanIdol's" Ace Young at the Bloomberg party. They invited Colbert to speak forlevity, not because they wanted to be criticized. As a tribe, we journalistsare all, at heart, creatures of this silly conversation. We trade in talkingpoints and consultant-speak. We too often depend on empty language for ourdaily bread, and -- worse -- we sometimes mistake it for reality. Colbertwas attacking us as well.

A day after he exploded his bomb at the correspondents dinner, Colbertappeared on CBS's "60 Minutes," this time as himself, an actor, a suburbandad, a man without a red and blue tie. The real Colbert admitted that hedoes not let his children watch his Comedy Central show. "Kids can'tunderstand irony or sarcasm, and I don't want them to perceive me asinsincere," Colbert explained. "Because one night, I'll be putting them tobed and I'll say ... 'I love you, honey.' And they'll say, 'I get it. Verydry, Dad. That's good stuff.'"

His point was spot-on. Irony is dangerous and must be handled with care. ButAmerica can rest assured that for the moment its powers are in good hands.Stephen Colbert, the current grandmaster of the art, knows exactly what hewas doing.

Just don't expect him to be invited back to the correspondents dinner.

_______________and from the SF Bay Situationists:

Comedian Stephen Colbert's keynote speech at the White House Correspondents'Association dinner last Saturday may represent a new stage in the crumblingof the Bush regime's image from within the dominant spectacle itself...It's a bizarre experience because most of the audience was decidedly notsympathetic. Not only was Bush himself sitting a few feet away at the sametable along with various other political bigwigs, but the major portion ofthe audience was the very journalists who with rare exceptions have treatedthe Bush regime with kid gloves over the last five years, and who weresatirized almost as scathingly as Bush himself. So some of Colbert'sfunniest remarks are received with a deafening silence, and the rare momentsof laughter are brief and uneasy, the audience obviously not having expectedsuch a scandal and wondering how they were supposed to take it.

The following article, which originally appeared at the Salon.com website,gives some information and commentary on the event, but is also of interestbecause the author makes a somewhat dubious and confused, but not totallyinappropriate, link between Colbert's methods and the subversive tactics ofthe situationists.